A familiar figure in the art world, John Weiss, who has died aged 85, was instantly recognisable in his cream suit, matching fedora hat, pointy beard and affable, indulgent manner.
A talented contemporary jewellery designer and silversmith, he was also a proud advocate of the work of his wife Althea McNish, the international, award-winning textile designer. Althea’s magnificent bursts of Caribbean colour proved a perfect foil for his own elegant, contemporary silver designs, both for men and women. The harmony of this immensely creative couple, both only children with no children of their own, was the perfect romantic bond in a marriage of nearly 50 years. “She brought to London a tropical framework of reference,”he told a meeting of the Clothes, Cloth and Culture Group in April, 2015. In his own work he introduced concepts which were deceptively simple in their linear, masculine design, or elegantly ornate, with a contemporary feel.
John Weiss was totally immersed in Althea’s history and her Trinidad background. She came to London, in the 1950s, and he appeared with her in a recent Channel 4 film on the Windrush generation.
John’s parents, Pollie and Woolf Weiss were descended from East European Jews who had fled the pogroms in Russia and Poland in the early 1900s, and moved to London in the late 1930s. Educated at Broadfields primary school in Edgware, John wrote regularly to his father, who was called up during the Second World War, and these letters, rediscovered after Pollie’s death in 2007, betray an insight into a six year old’s maturity, as he tried to cheer up his father in the midst of war. John became very involved in his extended local family, particularly his cousins Sheila, Marilyn, Malcolm and Ian, and showed a talent for craftwork by making pipe racks for his father and uncles.
He went to Haberdashers’Aske’s School, then in Elstree, and demonstrated a gift for piano, accompanying his father who played the violin in a local orchestra. Later he took up the French horn,developing a love for Mozart’s Horn Concerto in E flat major. He often took his cousin Marilyn to concerts at St John’s Smith Square, but he was also a keen photographer and in his youth converted the cupboard under the eaves in his bedroom into a darkroom. He made crystal set radios and experimented with Henry Moore-style sculptures out of wire and plaster of Paris, and multi-coloured blowpipe endpapers for books. Baking bread and chollah were other hobbies.
John was more interested in the community and historical side of Judaism, although his Barmitzvah brought him closer to an understanding of Jewish rituals. This intellectual fascination would eventually lead to a passion for historical research that uncovered not only a genealogical profile of his own East European Jewish roots, but also those of Althea.
He graduated in architecture and town planning at London University and worked in town planning with Camden Council. His brief marriage to the artist Edwina Leapman ended in divorce and in August, 1969 he married Althea. She said of their marriage: “I couldn’t have asked for a better partner. John was very supportive, loving and considerate. We joined together to make life better for our students.”
By 1971 John headed the Furnishing and Interior Design department at the London College of Furniture, retiring as the college acting vice principal in 1993. Retirement gave him more time for his own work as a silversmith, developing his unique style of modern jewellery. He told his family that he liked to “just bash silver with a hammer and imprints and see how it turns out.” Gradually that innovative flair was extended into other design areas, such as cutlery and religious artefacts. He was commissioned to create an ornate modern Torah crown cover by the Bristol and West Progressive Jewish congregation.
John exhibited his silverwork widely with the Designer Jewellers Group at the Barbican Centre, and set up an annual award for the most innovative use of colour, in memory of his mother, at the annual summer exhibition of the Society of Designer Craftsmen. The couple also exhibited together at shows at the Mall Galleries in London.
“John and Althea were great ambassadors for the UK Fashion and Textile Design Sector,” said Jake Leith, Past President and Fellow of the Chartered Society of Designers, of which John was also a Fellow. A colleague at the Society, Carmen Martinez-Lopez, described John as not only a “brilliant designer, but a kind and considerate person.”
John’s passion for research launched him into a comprehensive study of the shifting migratory patterns that established the McNishes and other families in Trinidad and Tobago and the USA. Following the publication of his history, Black Liberation on Cumberland Island, 1815, he and Althea gave several lecture tours abroad to generate an understanding of the complexity of this story.
The intellectual depths of this multi-layered personality may have been masked by his light and convivial manner. Both he and Althea were generous hosts, and guests at his birthday parties were invited to sample his unusual and imaginative cuisine, on which he always gave a running commentary. Colleagues at the London College of Furniture recalled his inspiration, his energy, his kindness and supportive qualities. He is survived by Althea, his cousins Sheila and Marilyn, her children, grandchildren, great granddaughter and extended family.
gloria tessler
John Saul Weiss: born June 21, 1933. Died November 9, 2018
